If you are a TDD (Test-Driven Development) believer, you should write unit test before writing the code. Test-first programming is practiced by only writing new code when an automated test is failing.

Good tests tell you how to best design the system for its intended use. They effectively communicate in an executable format how to use the software. They also prevent tendencies to over-build the system based on speculation. When all the tests pass, you know you're done!

Whenever a customer test fails or a bug is reported, first write the necessary unit test(s) to expose the bug(s), then fix them. This makes it almost impossible for that particular bug to resurface later.

Test-driven development is a lot more fun than writing tests after the code seems to be working. Give it a try!

* If a method is not returning anything through the "return" statement (void method), it may return data through its arguments. In this case, you can test the data returned in any argument.
* Else if a method is not returning any data through its arguments, it may change values of its instance variables. In this case, you can test changes of any instance variables.
* Else if a method is not changing any instance variable, it may change values of its class variables. In this case, you can test changes of any class variables.
* Else if a method is not changing any class variable, it may change external resources. In this case, you can test changes of any external resources.
* Else if a method is not changing any external resources, it may just doing nothing but holding the thread in a waiting status. In this case, you can test this waiting condition.
* Else if a method is not holding the thread in waiting status, then this method is really doing nothing. In this case, there is no need to test this method. :-)

My guess would be that all objects used in a test will be ready for Java garbage collector to release them immediately after the test has been executed.

By design, the tree of Test instances is built in one pass, then the tests are executed in a second pass. The test runner holds strong references to all Test instances for the duration of the test execution. This means that for a very long test run with many Test instances, none of the tests may be garbage collected until the end of the entire test run.

Therefore, if you allocate external or limited resources in a test, you are responsible for freeing those resources. Explicitly setting an object to null in the tearDown() method, for example, allows it to be garbage collected before the end of the entire test run.

If this is true, the JUnit runner should be improved to stop building all test instances before executing any tests. Instead, the JUnit runner should just take one test at a time, build an instance of this test, execute the test, and release the test when the execution is done.

Be practical and maximize your testing investment. Remember that investments in testing are equal investments in design. If defects aren't being reported and your design responds well to change, then you're probably testing enough. If you're spending a lot of time fixing defects and your design is difficult to grow, you should write more tests.

If something is difficult to test, it's usually an opportunity for a design improvement. Look to improve the design so that it's easier to test, and by doing so a better design will usually emerge.

Run all your unit tests as often as possible, ideally every time the code is changed. Make sure all your unit tests always run at 100%. Frequent testing gives you confidence that your changes didn't break anything and generally lowers the stress of programming in the dark.

For larger systems, you may just run specific test suites that are relevant to the code you're working on.

Run all your acceptance, integration, stress, and unit tests at least once per day (or night).

If you're using Eclipse, be sure to check out David Saff's continuous testing plug-in.

Test-driven development generally lowers the defect density of software. But we're all fallible, so sometimes a defect will slip through. When this happens, write a failing test that exposes the defect. When the test passes, you know the defect is fixed!

Don't forget to use this as a learning opportunity. Perhaps the defect could have been prevented by being more aggressive about testing everything that could reasonably break.

Or perhaps there are other places in the application that have the similar code that might break too.

The general philosophy is this: if it can't break on its own, it's too simple to break.

First example is the getX() method. Suppose the getX() method only answers the value of an instance variable. In that case, getX() cannot break unless either the compiler or the interpreter is also broken. For that reason, don't test getX(); there is no benefit. The same is true of the setX() method, although if your setX() method does any parameter validation or has any side effects, you likely need to test it.

There are three ways to run JUnit Test Cases or Test Suites in Eclipse with JUnit plugin: org.junit_3.8.1.

1. You can right click on the test case class or test suite class and select Run As > JUnit Test.

2. You can select a test case or suite and click the arrow on the icon or select Run from the toolbar, and select Run As > JUnit Test.

3. You can select a test case or suite and click the arrow on the icon or select Run from the toolbar, and select Run... From here you will create a new JUnit test configuration, and name it. You can choose to run a single test case, or run all test cases in a project or folder.

There are detailed steps to create a test case class in Eclipse with JUnit plugin: org.junit_3.8.1.

1. Use the Browse button to search for a different super class. The default super class is junit.framework.TestCase.

2. Check which method stubs you would like to create. You can create a main method, setUp(), tearDown(), or a constructor(), but all of these are optional. A constructor is only run when the test case class is first instantiated, but the setUp() and tearDown() methods are run before and after, respectively, each test case is run.

3. You can browse the application that you are creating for a class that you wish to test, or this could be left blank if you will generate the class while creating while creating the test.

- If you selected a "Class Under Test" you can click the Next button, otherwise click Finish. You will be able to select which methods in the class under test that you want to write test cases for. The method signatures will be created for you. Click Finish. The new test case class will be open in the editor.

- This test class demonstrates the basic functionality of the setUp() and tearDown() methods, and gives example test cases. The testForException() method demonstrates how to test that an exception is properly thrown.

Note: All source methods in the class under test must be public or protected, not private, in order to be tested by JUnit. If the method in the class under test is private, the test class must be in the same package.

To test classes that must be run in a J2EE container (e.g. servlets, EJBs), you should refactor J2EE components to delegate functionality to other objects that don't have to be run in a J2EE container will improve the design and testability of the software.

Cactus is an open source JUnit extension that can be used to test J2EE components in their natural environment.

Usually, there are many classes to be tested in a Java application. For each Java class in the application you need to write a JUnit test case class comtaining multiple test methods.

You could call a JUnit runner to run each JUnit test case class manually. But you should group all JUnit test case clases into a test suite with JUnit TestSuite. The following code and notes are provided by Varun Chopra and valid for JUnit 3.8 with some corrections.

To group all test case classes together and run them a single unit, you should create a new class named like AllTests.java. In this class you must create a "public static Test suite()" method, which returns a TestSuite object as a container of test case classes.

A JUnit 4.4 test class contains a @Before method, an @After method and multiple @test methods. When calling a test runner to run this test class, the runner will execute those methods in a specific order giving the test class an execution life cycle like this:

From the previous question, you know that if you write a setup code under the "@Before" annotation, it will be executed many times: once per each test in the test class.

Is there any way to write a setup code that will be executed only once for all tests in a single test class? The answer is YES. Here is how the JUnit FAQ answers this question in details:

The desire to do this is usually a symptom of excessive coupling in your design. If two or more tests must share the same test fixture state, then the tests may be trying to tell you that the classes under test have some undesirable dependencies.

Refactoring the design to further decouple the classes under test and eliminate code duplication is usually a better investment than setting up a shared test fixture.

But if you must...

You can add a @BeforeClass annotation to a method to be run before all the tests in a class, and a @AfterClass annotation to a method to be run after all the tests in a class.

A JUnit 3.8 test case class contains a setUp() method, a tearDown() method and multiple testXXX() methods. When calling a test runner to run this test class, the runner will execute those methods in a specific order giving the test case class an execution life cycle like this:

A test fixture is a fixed state of a set of objects used as a baseline for running tests. The purpose of a test fixture is to ensure that there is a well known and fixed environment in which tests are run so that results are repeatable. Examples of fixtures:

* Loading a database with a specific, known set of data
* Copying a specific known set of files
* Preparation of input data and setup/creation of fake or mock objects

In other word, creating a test fixture is to create a set of objects initialized to certain states.

If a group of tests requires diferent test fixtures, you can write code inside the test method to create its own test fixture.

If a group of tests shares the same fixtures, you should write a separate setup code to create the common test fixture.

junit.textui.TestRunner - A command line based tool to run tests. TestRunner expects the name of a TestCase class as argument. If this class defines a static suite method it will be invoked and the returned test is run. Otherwise all the methods starting with "test" having no arguments are run.

junit.awtgui.TestRunner - An AWT based user interface to run tests. Enter the name of a class which either provides a static suite method or is a subclass of TestCase. TestRunner takes as an optional argument the name of the testcase class to be run.

junit.swingui.TestRunner - A Swing based user interface to run tests. Enter the name of a class which either provides a static suite method or is a subclass of TestCase. TestRunner takes as an optional argument the name of the testcase class to be run.

All 3 runners can be executed directly by JVM with a class name as an argument

Test Case Class: Named as [classname]Test.java, where "classname" is the name of the class that is being tested. A test case class define the fixture to run multiple tests. A test case class must be subclass of junit.framework.TestCase.

Test Method: Named test[XXX], where "XXX" is any unique name for this test. A test method name should be prefixed with "test" to allow the TestSuite class to extract it automatically. A test method must be declared as "public".

Test Suite: Can be named any way you want to. But Eclipse uses AllTests.java as the name. A test suite is a collection of test cases.

Inserting debug statements into code is a low-tech method for debugging it. It usually requires that output be scanned manually every time the program is run to ensure that the code is doing what's expected.

It generally takes less time in the long run to codify expectations in the form of an automated JUnit test that retains its value over time. If it's difficult to write a test to assert expectations, the tests may be telling you that shorter and more cohesive methods would improve your design.

It is possible to write a main() method in each class that need to be tested for unit testing. In the main() method, you could create test object of the class itself, and write some tests to test its methods.

However, this is not a recommended approach because of the following points:

* Your classes will be cluttered with test code in main method. All those test codes will be packaged into the final product.
* If you have a lots of classes to test, you need to run the main() method of every class. This requires some extra coding effort.
* If you want the test results to be displayed in a GUI, you will have to write code for that GUI.
* If you want to log the results of tests in HTML format or text format, you will have to write additional code.
* If one method call fails, next method calls won?t be executed. You will have to work-around this.
* If you start working on a project created by some other team in your organization, you may see an entirely different approach for testing. That will increase your learning time and things won?t be standard.

This is a common question in a job interview. You should answer it with these points:

* A debugger is designed for manual debugging and manual unit testing, not for automated unit testing.
* JUnit is designed for automated unit testing.
* Automated unit testing requires extra time to setup initially. But it will save your time, if your code requires changes many times in the future.

Here is how the JUnit FAQ answers this question:

Debuggers are commonly used to step through code and inspect that the variables along the way contain the expected values. But stepping through a program in a debugger is a manual process that requires tedious visual inspections. In essence, the debugging session is nothing more than a manual check of expected vs. actual results. Moreover, every time the program changes we must manually step back through the program in the debugger to ensure that nothing broke.

It generally takes less time to codify expectations in the form of an automated JUnit test that retains its value over time. If it's difficult to write a test to assert expected values, the tests may be telling you that shorter and more cohesive methods would improve your design.

"@SuiteClasses" is a class annotation defined in JUnit 4.4 in org.junit.runners.Suite.SuiteClasses. It allows you to define a suite class as described in the previous question.

By the way, the API document of JUnit 4.4 has a major typo for the org.junit.runners.Suite class (Suite.html).

Using Suite as a runner allows you to manually build a suite containing tests from many classes. It is the JUnit 4 equivalent of the JUnit 3.8.x static Test suite() method. To use it, annotate a class with @RunWith(Suite.class) and @SuiteClasses(TestClass1.class, ...). When you run this class, it will run all the tests in all the suite classes.

"@SuiteClasses(TestClass1.class, ...)" should be changed to "@Suite.SuiteClasses({TestClass1.class, ...})".

Poeple use the static import statement on org.junit.Assert to save coding time on calling its assetion methods. With a normal import statement, assertion method names must qualified with the class name like this:

This interview question is to check if you know the basic rules about writing a JUnit test method:

* You need to mark the method as a JUnit test method with the JUnit annotation: @org.junit.Test.
* A JUnit test method must be a "public" method. This allows the runner class to access this method.
* A JUnit test method must be a "void" method. The runner class does not check any return values.
* A JUnit test should perform one JUnit assertion - calling an org.junit.Assert.assertXXX() method.

* Delete the directory that contains the JUnit JAR file and other JUnit files.
* Remove the JUnit JAR file from the CLASSPATH environment variable.
* No need to stop any background processes, because JUnit does not use background process.
* No need to remove any registry settings, because JUnit does not use Windows registry.

To run JUnit tests from a command window, you need to check the following list:

1. Make sure that JDK is installed and the "java" command program is accessible through the PATH setting. Type "java -version" at the command prompt, you should see the JVM reports you back the version string.

2. Make sure that the CLASSPATH is defined as shown in the previous question.

It doesn't matter if you run your JUnit tests from a command line, from an IDE, or from "ant", you must define your CLASSPATH settings correctly. Here is what recommended by the JUnit FAQ with some minor changes:

To run your JUnit tests, you'll need the following elemements in your CLASSPATH:

* The JUnit JAR file.
* Location of your JUnit test classes.
* Location of classes to be tested.
* JAR files of class libraries that are required by classes to be tested.

If attempting to run your tests results in a NoClassDefFoundError, then something is missing from your CLASSPATH.

If you are running your JUnit tests from a command line on a Windows system:

set CLASSPATH=c:Ajunit-4.4.jar;c:Btest_classes;
c:Btarget_classes;c:D3rd_party.jar

If you are running your JUnit tests from a command line on a Unix (bash) system:

A JUnit test class usually contains a number of test methods. You can run all test methods in a JUnit test class with the JUnitCore runner class. For example, to run the test class HelloTest.java described previously, you should do this:

Compiling a JUnit test class is like compiling any other Java classes. The only thing you need watch out is that the JUnit JAR file must be included in the classpath. For example, to compile the test class HelloTest.java described previously, you should do this:

This is a commonly asked question in a job interview. Your answer should have these points:

► I believe that writing more tests will make me more productive, not less productive.
► I believe that tests should be done as soon as possible at the code unit level.
► I believe that using JUnit makes unit testing easier and faster.

Where do I download JUnit? I don't think anyone will ask this question in a job interview. But the answer is simple. You should follow the download instructions from the JUnit official Website: JUnit.org.

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